Q: Guruji, how did a handful of British people rule a spiritual giant like India? Is there something to learn from this?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Well, you can wonder about it! One speciality of India is that there was never any unity here. Once I was in Europe and a journalist asked me, ‘Gurudev, tell me, how come the Indian journalists criticize India more than anybody else?’ I said, ‘This is our speciality, we fight with each other.’ It was the internal fight between many kingdoms, and the selfishness of the kings that led to that sort of thing. In some way, it was good; the British did some good also to colonial India. You should see the positive side of everything. Of course, there are many negative aspects of the colonial rule, but there was also some positivity, you have to see that also. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been speaking in English today, and India would have never gotten into computers at all. It would be like China. We would have all had our own different languages; 600 dialects, 24 languages, and India would have been really fragmented. Today English, somehow, has become a very common language, and India can connect itself with the entire world. So there are advantages, there are some good things. Of course, there were many bad things too. Many laws from those times that are obsolete today are still in place. So all the young people, like you, should become law makers, and change all these laws. Women have already taken the reins in their hands, and have started changing some of the laws. I am sure more will happen.